The Khronos Group - a non-profit industry consortium to develop, publish and promote open standard, royalty-free media authoring and acceleration standards for desktop and handheld devices, combined with conformance qualification programs for platform and device interoperability.

Khronos Group Launches OpenML Beta SDK

Available free-of-charge from the Khronos website; Significant Industry Interest in Alpha SDK with Over 5,000 Downloads

December 9, 2003 – Digital Video Exposition (DV Expo), Los Angeles – The Khronos Group today announced the first beta release of the Software Development Kit (SDK) for OpenML® 1.0. The alpha release of the SDK at the SIGGRAPH trade show on July 29, 2003 generated strong interest in the digital media industry with over 5,000 downloads from the Khronos web-site. The OpenML API standard provides software and hardware developers with a complete, cross-platform, programming environment for the standardized capturing, processing, synchronizing and playing of digital media content. With the widespread adoption of OpenML, developers can take advantage of open system architectures for integrated graphics and video software; enabling the development of cross platform media content authoring applications. The OpenML Beta SDK can be downloaded, free-of-charge, at www.khronos.org/developers/downloads.html.

The OpenML 1.0 SDK Beta1 delivers the media library (ML) and the display control (mlDC) components of the OpenML specification. The release enables full functionality for configuring and controlling video/audio device input, output and processing, and for setting up and controlling channels in display screens. The OpenML SDK Beta1 release, available for both the Windows and Linux platforms, complements the OpenML SDK already available from SGI for the IRIX® platform. Khronos is working towards a final release of the OpenML 1.0 SDK for Windows, Linux and IRIX in the spring of 2004 and will soon release details of its OpenML 1.0 Adopters Program designed to provide interested companies with access to the source code for OpenML Conformance Tests and the final OpenML SDK.

The Khronos Group believes that the OpenML standard is key to enabling growth in the digital media authoring, playback and streaming markets. OpenML enables multimedia authoring application developers to efficiently develop and deploy cross-platform applications that interoperate with a wide selection of systems and peripherals, enables hardware vendors to leverage the efforts of a larger base of application developers, and offers end-users increased functionality across a wider range of platforms at cheaper prices. OpenML enables media processing components from many manufacturers to be flexibly mixed and matched to increase end-user flexibility while reducing platform costs.

Quotes from Khronos Members
“Discreet firmly believes the digital media industry is ripe for more effective standardization that will improve the development process for all manufacturers and enhance the end user experience through greater interoperability,” says Jean-Luc Dery, product development manager at Discreet and chair of the OpenML work group. “The OpenML 1.0 SDK fulfills this need by delivering the toolset needed to better leverage and harness the increasing number of professional-grade quality media technologies offered at lower cost.” www.discreet.com - (NASDAQ:ADSK)

“3Dlabs supports OpenML development through its commitment to the Khronos Group; helping develop this new standard that enables end-users to mix and match hardware and software components, so they can build media authoring platforms that truly meet their individual needs,” says Neil Trevett, senior vice president of market development at 3Dlabs and president of the Khronos Group. “OpenML also enables today’s advanced 3D workstation graphics boards to add significant added value to video and media authoring applications – driving the convergence of the graphics and video industries.” www.3dlabs.com

“DVS is committed to the development of OpenML, as it provides a complete programming environment, with two distinct APIs and a set of OpenGL extensions, which enable applications to easily take advantage of standardized rich media hardware capabilities across multiple platforms. This will enable a hardware manufacturer such as DVS to support a variety of operating systems and provide standardized interfaces that will allow software companies to speed up their development process.” Marcus Goluecke, Product Manager, DVS - www.dvs.de

“Working with Khronos’ OpenML enables Motorola to integrate dynamic media creation and presentation into a wide variety of architectures. This allows the creative development community to bring their ideas to market easily, without having to spend time grappling with technical details. The OpenML SDK is a step forward to reaching this goal.” Mike McCourt - Vice President and General Manager, Wireless Solutions Division www.motorola.com - (NYSE: MOT)

“RealVision continues their membership in the Khronos Group to further provide every customer in digital content creation with easy-use, convenient and high-performance development environments. The advancement and availability of open standard APIs creates a better relationship between hardware manufacturers and software companies by providing standardized interfaces that speed the development process. ” Mineshi Hasegawa, Executive Vice President, RVU Inc., a div. of RealVision, Inc. - (TSE: 6786.T) – www.realvision.co.jp - www.rvu-inc.com

“SGI is delighted to see the continued successes of OpenML. As the creator of OpenGL, and the first implementer of OpenML, SGI is firmly committed to the development of open standards. When fragmented, proprietary APIs are replaced by broadly supported industry standards, customers will be the ultimate winners.” Shawn Underwood, Director of Marketing, SGI (NYSE: SGI) - www.sgi.com

About the Khronos SIG
The Khronos Group was founded in January 2000 by a number of leading graphics and digital media companies including 3Dlabs, ATI, Discreet, Evans & Sutherland, Intel, SGI and Sun Microsystems to promote the creation and deployment of rich media through the creation of open standard APIs to enable the authoring and playback of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms & devices. Go to www.khronos.org for more information.

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OpenGL is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc., OpenML is a trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc. used by permission by Khronos. All other product names, trademarks, and/or company names are used solely for identification and belong to their respective owners.

December 9, 2003 - Los Angeles - The Khronos Group today announced the (((need news updated – JLD))) alpha release of the Software Development Kit (SDK) for OpenML® 1.0, a cross-platform programming environment for capturing, processing, synchronizing and playing digital media content. The SDK alpha release, for both the Windows and Linux platforms, delivers the media library (“ML”) component of the specification, providing a low level API for configuring and controlling video/audio device input, output and processing features. The OpenML 1.0 SDK alpha release, available for free download at www.khronos.org/developers/downloads.html complements the OpenML SDK already available from SGI for the IRIX® platform. Khronos is working towards producing a fully integrated OpenML SDK for Windows, Linux and IRIX; anticipated for spring 2004.

illustrates how OpenML liberates applications from programming proprietary media hardware interfaces - encouraging the availability of advanced authoring application across multiple platforms and working towards making buying and using video cards as easy as buying OpenGL®-compliant graphics cards.

The Khronos group encourages all hardware and software developers to use and build products using the royalty free OpenML 1.0 specification and the new SDK. At CES Las Vegas in January 2004, Khronos expects to release an OpenML 1.0 Adopter Program that will enable interested companies to join Khronos for a small one time fee and gain access to source code for OpenML Conformance Tests, and to use the OpenML trademark on products that pass the defined testing procedure.

Quotes from OpenML Working Group Members (((NEED NEW QUOTES)))
“3Dlabs helped found Khronos to create the OpenML specification and transform the market for rich media content authoring products and we are delighted to see the availability of an SDK to enable the commercial implementation of this important technology,” said Neil Trevett, senior vice president of market development at 3Dlabs and secretary of the Khronos Group. “We are also thrilled that the first demonstrable implementation of OpenML on Windows is running on a 3Dlabs P10 VPU on an advanced video-editing board from our partner RealVision.”

“Discreet believes this first version of OpenML 1.0 SDK is an exciting step forward that will build momentum behind the standard and benefit all manufacturers of graphics and video applications” explains Jean-Luc Dery, product development manager at Discreet and chair of the OpenML workgroup. “Whether working on a video or film production, developing a game, or simply streaming multimedia content, content creators and their end users will benefit alike from the SDK which provides a more coherent way to orchestrate multiple media applications and hardware peripherals.”

“As the first new Promoter to join Khronos at its origination, DVS has always believed the future of the rich media industry requires synchronistic open solutions instead of a collection of individual concepts; and so continues to promote the development of OpenML,” says Marcus Golücke, Product Manger at DVS GmbH. “At our SIGGRAPH Booth #3315 we are proud to introduce our new HD-real-time editing workstation system ‘CLIPSTER’ that supports all OpenML-compatible software and is able to offer its users all the possibilities they need to design their work.”

“With the OpenML SDK Khronos is bringing to the industry the ability to easily create cross platform media content based on open standards,” states Morris Moore, Vice President and Director, Systems and Architecture, Wireless and Mobile Systems Group, Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector (NYSE:MOT). “This reinforces Motorola’s vision of allowing portability of applications from handheld mobile, home, work and automotive products.”

“RealVision (TSE: 6786.T) is pleased to have been a part of the Khronos Group from its inception, and is pleased to have its VREngine SD10 and HD10 advanced video and graphics processing boards available for demonstration here at SIGGRAPH,” stated Mike Hasegawa, executive vice president for RealVision USA. “With the widespread deployment of the OpenML SDK we can now realize the promise of open system architectures for integrated graphics and video applications; with applications now being developed in a way that utilizes state-of-the-art hardware, enabling the highest performance and shortest development time.”

“SGI (NYSE: SGI) is excited by the idea of having a digital media API that contributes to the growth of the entire industry in much the same way OpenGL helped grow the graphics market over 10 years ago,” says Shawn Underwood, director of marketing, Visual Systems Group, SGI. “The release of the OpenML SDK an early step in ensuring that kind of broad adoption and we look forward to continued participation with the Khronos Group on this endeavor.”

Khronos Group invites you to visit their website and see the latest presentation ton the state of OpenML – and a road map of our plans. JLD update and give to Tony to upload

The Khronos Group is a member-funded industry consortium founded in January 2000 by leading graphics and digital media companies. Khronos membership is available to any interested company and both Promoting and Contributing members are able to contribute to the development of Khronos API specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment, and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge 3D platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts. Go to www.khronos.org for more information.

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OpenGL and IRIX are registered trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc., OpenML is a trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc. used by permission by Khronos. All other product names, trademarks, and/or company names are used solely for identification and belong to their respective owners.